


The Wild Hunt Job

by lady_ragnell



Series: Prompt Reposts [32]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: A client asks the Leverage team to bring her daughter back from the fey.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A repost of a prompt written about a year ago.
> 
> **Warning** for kidnapped children.

“My daughter,” the woman says, soft into her coffee. Parker's skin feels electric and pricked-up, like she needs to climb until the air is thin. “The Wild Hunt took her last year.”

“Is the government not going through the proper channels—”

The woman shakes her head before Nate can get going. “And I haven't been cheated by a bounty hunter who has a door through to the Realm. The Hunt is riding again soon, and I want her back. That's all I want.”

“No one has ever come back, once they've been stolen,” Sophie says softly, reaching across the table to take the woman's hands. “We can find you resources, but we can't—”

“Someone has,” says Parker. It's abrupt, she knows it's abrupt and that she's not supposed to be listening, that the prospective client isn't supposed to know she's listening in, but Sophie is wrong. “Sometimes, when people get stolen, they can steal themselves back.”

“We'll do it,” says Nate, who was always going to say yes anyway, as soon as he figured out what the client wants. Nate doesn't say no just because things are impossible.

Parker slips away for this part. Sophie is watching her, but Sophie is smart. She's already figured it out, now. She doesn't need Parker to tell her.

*

“No way, Nate!” That's Eliot, standing up, fists clenched. “There are dangerous jobs, and then there's this. Nobody takes on the fey, Nate, and nobody takes on the Wild Hunt.”

“That's why we steal her back before the Hunt,” says Nate.

Parker stays perched on the edge of the couch, and Sophie stays leaning in her chair, and Hardison stays where he is, in front of the screen, the client's picture frozen next to him. He looks scared, but he looks excited too.

Eliot just looks scared, even if it's coming out angry, but Eliot carries iron nails in his pockets and lines his windows with salt just like Parker does. “She's gonna be guarded, Nate. It's not flowers and singing, even in the Seelie Court, if that's where she is.”

“It's a better idea than trying the Hunt,” says Parker. “It's hard to hold on, they always make you hold on, and if we can get her out before that … she'll remember being a wolf, or a snake. We need to steal her before then.”

Eliot's still scared, but he's watching her now too, and Hardison is watching her, and after a minute, he backs down, puts his hand in his pocket and holds on to the nails in there. There are three of them, always. Parker has picked his pocket a few times to check. “Fine, Nate,” he finally grits out. “How are we going to do this?”

“We're going to steal the Seelie Court.”

*

“I always thought you were a changeling,” Hardison says, frowning at a holographic projector.

“I thought you were too, for a while,” Parker admits.

“So did Nana. Nah, I just figured out glamor works like computers do, sometimes. Give the right input, you get the right output. Just takes different hardware, that's all.” Hardison keeps working, and that's what lets Parker relax, lets her have this talk. She never wanted to remember, but she's going to have to. She's the one who has to steal her back. “You were always so fast, though, and you knew things sometimes, so I figured you were a changeling. But you're kind of the opposite, aren't you?”

They didn't have a lot of nice words for what she was, in the Realm. They don't really have words at all for what she is here, aside from a stolen child, and neither of those things is right anymore. The opposite of a changeling isn't right either, but it's more right. “Kind of.”

“Are you gonna be okay, Parker? I know Nate chooses the jobs, but we can say no.”

“We can't … we can't steal everyone back. But we can steal her, maybe.”

“The great thing about humans is that we adapt fast. We'll get her out. Most people are just too scared to try.” Hardison presses a button and there's the glamor, the start of what Sophie and Nate are going to need to build the con. “We're good at trying stupid things that make people with common sense run in the opposite direction.”

*

Fey aren't supposed to look like time has ever touched them, so Sophie doesn't. She doesn't even need glamor. All she has to do is pull whoever she is today around her and nobody will notice if there's a wrinkle or two. Hardison's glamor is shimmering all over her and Nate anyway, enough that no one will guess that they aren't fey, but Sophie doesn't need it.

Eliot took the iron out of his pockets, since it can't cross into the Realm, but he dripped water on his jacket and Parker smelled salt sewn into the lining, so he's safe. Hardison is wrapped up in glamor too, and he's almost as convincing as Sophie. None of them look like the people she knows.

Parker just slips in between the worlds. She's good at that. Archie taught her, before she stole herself, and she hasn't been back since, but she remembers how to do it.

Everything in the Realm is beautiful and too perfect, more perfect than diamonds or gold or cash, every leaf brought back across intact worth enough money to fill one of her boltholes with dollar bills.

Parker could bring back whatever she wanted, the way she travels, but she won't touch a single petal on a flower if she can help it.

*

“You're Clara, right?” Parker whispers to the girl sitting under a tree counting flower petals. She looks pretty, like a girl in a painting Parker might steal, but Parker knows how boring it can be to be kept.

Clara looks up. It's definitely her. “Who are you?”

“Your mother sent us. We're going to steal you. You're going home, and not by the Hunt's rules.”

Most people are predictable. Clara should say thank you, and maybe cry, and maybe try to hug Parker, which makes her wish Hardison were there, but instead her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “No, I can't.” Parker doesn't know what question to ask, but Clara answers for her. “Not alone.”

*

“Clara's mother is the client,” says Nate when she finds him. He doesn't look like himself, but he sounds like himself, so Parker tries not to look at him. “It's understandable that she's friendly with the people she was captured with, but we can't take every human in this branch of the Seelie Court. There's a dozen by my count.”

“It's not—”

“I know they shouldn't have anyone, Parker, I know it's been most of a century since they said they wouldn't take anyone who didn't make an official request, but we can't save everyone. Not this time.”

“Yes we can.” Parker crosses her arms. “We can.”

“We might—might, I stress—get five of them, if they all rode with the Hunt, but the con we're working, it can only be one.”

Parker shakes her head. “We can get them all out. I know how.”

*

“They can't lie,” says Parker, when they're all gathered, hidden behind one of Hardison's best glamors. Even most fey can't do that, make five people invisible.

“We know that—”

She cuts Eliot off. “So if you can make them lie, they have to make it true. If we can get them to say that all the humans here are free, then ...”

“Then we can get them all out,” says Nate, eyes already lighting up, and Parker knows they're going to do it.

*

When the Wild Hunt rides, it rides for them. Parker can hear them coming from blocks and blocks away, motorcycles and horses and whatever else the fey can ride, coming after the people who dared to take fourteen servants from them.

Parker gets ready to hold on to herself, to keep herself Parker no matter what they turn her into, when Hardison grabs one of her hands and Sophie grabs the other, with Nate and Eliot beyond them, all of them standing straight and holding on. They're the thieves here. They aren't going to let themselves be stolen.

None of them lets go.


End file.
